Days of our Lives (pre-destruction of Will and Sonny); runners-up: ATWT, Sunset Beach, OLTL, Y&R

Kaha

Mar 21 2014, 07:32 AM

Will&Sonny

Mar 21 2014, 03:04 AM

Kaha

Mar 20 2014, 09:12 PM

Renaissance Girl

Mar 20 2014, 08:52 PM

Quoting limited to 4 levels deep

Theresa's motives, her relationship with her parents and why she's so scared about returning to LA are all a mystery. Personally, I think her family is shitty and doesn't care much about her (except Eric and Caroline).

She got her first job (working with Jennifer) through her aunt. When Jennifer fired her because she tried to embezzle money from the hospital, Anne hired her for the sole purpose of making Jennifer's life hell. Totally plausible. :eyeroll:

As for her addiction, people develop addiction because of biological factors, psychological factors, or social factors. Maybe Theresa was hanging around with the wrong crowd. We don't know much about her. Maybe, Eve will shed some light to this character.

I always feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone when people start complaining about Theresa being a character who makes no sense. At the very least, I'm watching a different show than the rest of you are. While a couple of the below comments are pure conjecture on my part, the vast majority of them are taken straight from what has been shown and said on-screen.

When Theresa was hanging out with Vargas, he was presenting himself as a man of wealth because Nick had turned the thirty thousand dollars that Vargas had hidden before getting arrested (the first time, not the second time) into close to one hundred thousand dollars. He was wearing expensive suits and renting limousines, and that is why Theresa showed an interest in him.

Theresa also showed an interest in Daniel before learning that he was involved with Jennifer, simply because he was a doctor, meaning that he was a man of wealth in Theresa's eyes.

Likewise, Theresa showed an interest in Nick because he was wearing an expensive suit during their first meeting, but she quickly changed her mind when J.J. clued her in to who Nick truly was.

Granted, it is true that J.J. certainly didn't have much to offer her in terms of financial gain, but she only showed real interest in him when she was feeling angry or upset about something and just wanted someone to want her (or she was trying to piss off Jennifer, of course). He was never someone she was actively pursuing.

Theresa has also consistently lamented her lack of funds and her inability to buy the material things that she covets and believes that she deserves as a result of that lack of funds. She has tried several get-rich-quick-(for-now) schemes in the past, and when she does have money (like the money she stole from Vargas after he got arrested the second time), she quickly blows it on material possessions.

As for being addicted, there hasn't really been anything to suggest that she's truly an addict, IMO, and I don't think that she identifies as such. Other people identify her as such, but at the risk of offending anyone who believes differently, not everyone who chooses to use drugs is an addict, and overdosing once doesn't make one an addict, either. Theresa seems to drink and do drugs because she likes drinking and doing drugs -- nothing more, nothing less. People just imposed this whole "stay clean and sober" thing on her because of her legal troubles in Los Angeles and her overdose in Salem (and, of course, because they care about her and don't want her to use drugs because drugs are "bad"). When she overdosed on GHB, it wasn't because she "needed" that much -- it was just because she was pissed off and cocky and thought that she could handle it, and J.J. wasn't planning to use it, so she wasn't willing to let it go to waste.

Now, Brady, on the other hand, is absolutely an addict. He wasn't always addicted to alcohol, and I disagree with Maggie's view that an addict has to stay away from all addictive substances, but he was most certainly addicted to cocaine, and now he is most certainly developing an addiction to alcohol. But Theresa is not an addict, from what I have seen. Certain characters just believe that she is because of their narrow-minded views of the concept of addiction.

As for Theresa's background, what we know is that she has issues with her mother that stem from the fact that Shane wasn't around much when Theresa was younger (we don't know how frequently he was absent, but he has admitted himself that this is true, so it's not just Theresa's biased view of the matter), which left most of the parenting in Kim's hands, and Kim isn't exactly the most stable character in Days history herself. It has also been suggested (and is also pretty obvious to anyone who has taken a Psych 101 course, I'd guess) that Theresa's pattern of going after older men and using sex to get what she wants has a lot to do with her "daddy issues", which are themselves a direct result of Shane's absence from her life during her formative years.

Theresa is not afraid of her parents, and they absolutely do love her (as do the rest of her family members, although they have all been practicing tough love with her lately), but her relationship with them (particularly with her mother) is very tense and rocky, and she often pits them against each other to get what she wants. She also feels that Kim is very preachy and judgmental, which is part of why she has so much disdain for those qualities in other people (like Jennifer); Kim is a therapist, so Theresa often had to put up with being psychoanalyzed when she was growing up, and she didn't appreciate that at all.

Theresa's original job at the hospital involved working as Jennifer's assistant, and Jennifer did indeed agree to give Theresa that job as a personal favor to Kayla. When that didn't work out (initially because Theresa was lazy and never did any work, but then later because Jennifer started to realize that Theresa was bad news, and finally because Theresa tried to steal from the hospital), Anne hired Theresa to work for her in the human resources department. Theresa's "official" job was to handle the creation and distribution of hospital employee identification badges, but her "unofficial" job (and the real reason that Anne hired her) is to make Jennifer's life miserable.

Theresa doesn't want to return to Los Angeles because if she does, she will be sent directly to prison, as per the terms of her probation. Theresa avoided doing serious time in prison after falling in with the wrong crowd in Los Angeles, and she only managed that because she agreed to move to Salem and get a fresh start there. One of the terms of her probation is that she is required to remain employed; if she does not, she will be sent back to Los Angeles, her probation will be revoked, and she will be forced to serve out the remainder of her sentence in prison. That is why it's crucial that she doesn't lose her job, and it's one of the reasons that she hates Jennifer, who not only fired Theresa, but also was given the sole vote in deciding whether Theresa would get to stay in Salem or be sent back to Los Angeles (and by extension, prison) after the overdose occurred. Theresa hated Jennifer before that happened (for the reasons I have already mentioned above), but she hated Jennifer even more after that incident, because she resented the fact that Jennifer had been given that much power over her (and had even rubbed it in her face a bit). And now, everyone loves to remind her that she should be thanking Jennifer for keeping her out of prison, which just fans the flames.

Theresa was adamant about having sex on the couch in the Kiriakis mansion because that's just how she is -- she uses sex to get what she wants, and what she wants right now is Brady. She felt that showing him that she was adventurous enough and dangerous enough to have sex out in the open would make her more attractive to him, and he had also told her earlier that he wanted to do something different because they were stuck in a rut, so that was her solution. She also feels that sleeping with Brady is an adequate way of repaying him for buying her an expensive designer purse, but that's another matter.

Jennifer knows that money is one of Theresa's main motivating factors -- after all, she did catch Theresa trying to steal money from the hospital, and she knows that J.J. tricked Theresa into trying to steal from the hospital a second time -- so it is not unreasonable to assume that Maggie also knows (about the former incident, anyway -- obviously not the latter), which means that Maggie isn't just being her usual judgmental self; she does indeed have a reason to suspect that Theresa is a gold-digger. And in this case, Maggie's absolutely right about Theresa, as the audience knows because Theresa has commented on at least three recent occasions that she is interested in Brady's money.

Now, all of that having been said, it is true that Theresa has also shown a different side of herself on a few rare occasions -- mainly when she was around J.J. before the overdose and the aftermath of that event occurred. She did give J.J. some money when he needed a place to stay. She did bond with J.J. a few times when they both still agreed that they had bitchy, judgmental mothers. She has shown vulnerability with Caroline. As with many people, Theresa's tough, shallow exterior is basically just a defense mechanism. But that doesn't change the fact that until she decides to drop that wall, she truly is currently just interested in money, drugs, and sex (seemingly in that order) most of the time.

I wouldn't say that Theresa is inconsistent at all; she's just complex.

Okay, so I took more than psych 101 but I am still not seeing what you're seeing. The show hasn't explained why is Theresa so money hungry. She doesn't come from a poor background. When she was little, her father was so well off that they owned the current DiMera mansion. Her mother was married to a Hollywood producer when Theresa was growing up, so she doesn't seem like she's from the wrong side of the tracks. Now, I understand that LA rich and Salem rich are two different things. What's considered wealthy in small towns is just comfortable in big cities. I get that. But the way Theresa talks, it's like she grew up dirt poor.

That's not the only thing that doesn't make sense about Theresa, her whole probation doesn't make sense. They never explained why she's in Salem. She could've had the same probation condition in LA, i.e., work and not use drugs. Also, the reason she's afraid to go back to LA is not because she'll go to jail if she goes back, that's not what her parents were threatening her with. They were threatening her to take her to LA so that she can finish her probation there. Dan the douche was threatening her with jail time. And JJ has a video of her impersonating Abby so that she can cash a check (which will never be admitted as avidence in court). But whatever!

As for the drug addiction, I actually agree with you about that. Not everyone who uses drugs is an addict. And I am not actually sure if it's even part of her probation since we've never heard her talk about court supervised drug tests or any of that. But what's clear (at least to me) is that Theresa is always looking for a way to score drugs. She did that with Vargas and as soon as she scored, she moved on to some random guy at the club.

She didn't hook up with Vargas because he was rich, she hooked up with him because he had drugs, and he could get her to the Club TBD opening ceremony (totally lame ceremony). But I won't even over analyze that event because Theresa was just a plot devise so that Vargas is carted off to jail.

Theresa, like any other person with major addiction issues, needs money to score drugs, and she steals or attempted to steal twice because she needs that. In my personal and professional experience, that happens all the time. And it doesn't make the person bad or a scum but someone who needs treatment.

Again, I don't think Theresa is a gold diggger. Gold diggers actually work very hard to land a rich guy. She's never done that. She spent most of her time in Salem in JJ's company because he was her dealer. She knows Salem families, she knows who's rich and who's not. She could've just focused on landing herself a rich guy, instead of playing games with a high schooler.

Theresa mentioned once that her parents didn't shower her with mountains of disposable money (my words, not hers, but the point remains the same). Theresa's parents are financially stable and could perhaps even be considered "wealthy" in the same way that Hope is "wealthy", but Theresa's parents don't flaunt their wealth, just like Hope doesn't flaunt her wealth, and they are not wealthy in the way that the DiMeras or the Kiriakises are wealthy. Regardless, it doesn't matter how wealthy Theresa's parents are, because they are still living and until that changes, that money is theirs, not hers. Theresa is an adult who is not receiving any financial support from her parents -- she is now expected to make her own way in the world, and she doesn't want to do that in the typical nose-to-the-grindstone way, so she is always looking for the next opportunity to get a lot of extra money or take advantage of someone who has a lot of extra money.

It has indeed been explained that Theresa was sent to Salem with the expectation that being away from her old influences (the "wrong crowd" that she was hanging out with in Los Angeles) would help her get a fresh start. Staying in Los Angeles was not an option because they had tried that in the past and Theresa had kept falling right back into her old patterns of behavior. Think of the "three strikes" rule -- Theresa had already used up all of her second chances and was out of options; she was about to be sent to prison, but her lawyer managed to convince the judge to agree to give her one last chance in exchange for a radical change in her lifestyle. That change was a move to Salem -- a change in jurisdictions to get Theresa away from old temptations, as Kayla once put it. It's also a given that, while drugs can be found anywhere, Salem is simply going to offer less temptations, due to its very nature, than Los Angeles.

Prison is indeed what Theresa's parents were "threatening" her with, if you want to call it that (I wouldn't). In the episode where Kim and Shane visited Salem to stage an intervention of sorts for Theresa after her overdose, they specifically talked about this. Theresa promised that she would start attending Narcotics Anonymous (well, they consistently refer to it as Alcoholics Anonymous or A.A. on the show, but really, Narcotics Anonymous would have been more appropriate in Theresa's case -- again with the interchangeability) meetings in Salem, and Kim clarified that Theresa might have to attend them in Los Angeles instead. Theresa reminded everyone that her life would be over if she were sent back to Los Angeles, since that would result in her probation being revoked. Shane suggested that the judge who had named the terms of Theresa's probation might be willing to work out some sort of deal with her if she agreed to check herself into rehab upon returning to Los Angeles, and Kim added that even if that didn't happen, Theresa still had to deal with the consequences of her actions. Theresa continued to protest that she couldn't go back to Los Angeles, and she reminded everyone that she still had a job in Salem (because Anne had rehired Theresa after Jennifer had fired her), which prompted Kayla to state that Anne didn't really have the authority to do that sort of thing (because everyone at the hospital -- including Anne's bosses, who could override her decision to hire Theresa -- knew about Theresa's overdose, which generally isn't a good way to guarantee job security). Theresa responded that her probation would definitely be revoked if she were fired again.

Theresa has also claimed that her arrest in Los Angeles -- the one that had ended up getting her sent to Salem -- had only happened because an undercover cop had conspired to entrap her. That's her version of events, but it's still something else that has been established on the show.

Daniel threatened Theresa with prison time because practically everyone in Salem knows the terms of Theresa's probation. He and J.J. both know that if they send J.J.'s evidence to the judge in Los Angeles, Theresa's probation will be revoked because it depicts her committing an illegal act that is not only a clear violation of her probation but also grounds for new charges to be filed against her, and they also know that if her probation is revoked, she will be sent to prison in Los Angeles (because that's how that works, obviously), so it's a reasonable threat for them to make.

Further evidence of the fact that a prison sentence awaits Theresa if she is ever sent back to Los Angeles came when Kayla forced Theresa to craft a handwritten apology to Jennifer in an effort to convince Jennifer to give Theresa a second chance as Jennifer's assistant (this was before Theresa's overdose). Kayla reminded Theresa that if Jennifer didn't agree to give Theresa a second chance, Theresa would be "heading back west, serving time for a drug bust."

Theresa didn't use Vargas to get her into the opening of Club TBD -- she invited him to join her at the opening when she saw that he was handsome and well-dressed. He had been planning to attend a boxing match that night, but he canceled his plans to spend the evening with her instead. Drugs didn't even enter into the conversation during their first encounter.

Theresa doesn't use all of her money on drugs. She blew through most of the money that she stole from Vargas on online shopping sites, and we know that she was planning to spend at least a good portion of the money that J.J. tricked her into stealing from the hospital on that expensive designer purse that Brady eventually purchased for her. If anything, Theresa has been shown to be more interested in material possessions than drugs, although she is certainly interested in the latter, as well.

J.J. wasn't really Theresa's dealer -- she purchased weed from him a few times, but she had her own dealer, and she flaunted that in his face on more than one occasion because he was a "boy" who could only supply her with weed and she needed a "man" who could supply her with harder drugs, like cocaine and GHB.

You could call her an "amateur" gold-digger, I suppose, if you want to argue that she isn't pursuing her gold-digging attempts with enough focus and determination, but she has certainly exhibited gold-digger behavior multiple times since arriving in Salem -- probably more often than she has used hardcore drugs since arriving in Salem, actually.